


Peter Nureyev and the Guardian Angels

by ser_atlantisite



Category: The Penumbra Podcast
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Minority Report Fusion, Canon Typical Mag Death, Other, Psychic Abilities, but its not graphic i promise, juno and ben are magic twins
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-04
Updated: 2020-07-04
Packaged: 2021-03-04 23:22:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,190
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25074559
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ser_atlantisite/pseuds/ser_atlantisite
Summary: “So, this is it,” Peter whispered. “The Court of the Angels.”Where Brahma’s Guardian Angels received visions of the future, visions of murderers and victims and the bloody acts themselves, and deigned to send out their emissaries to apprehend the guilty before they ever were. To save humanity from themselves. For the good of all, the government insisted.Funny, how often the angels predicted crimes to be committed by those who drew the government’s ire.Whatever the truth of the program was, it ended today.
Relationships: Peter Nureyev/Juno Steel
Comments: 11
Kudos: 74





	Peter Nureyev and the Guardian Angels

“So, this is it,” Peter whispered. “The Court of the Angels.” His voice echoed strangely in the antechamber, now that he and Mag were the only ones conscious in it.

Four guards lay tased and trussed opposite the threshold to the ‘Temple’, where the mysterious pre-cognitives resided.

Where Brahma’s Guardian Angels received visions of the future, visions of murderers and victims and the bloody acts themselves, and deigned to send out their emissaries to apprehend the guilty before they ever were. To save humanity from themselves. For the good of all, the government insisted.

Funny, how often the angels predicted crimes to be committed by those who drew the government’s ire.

Whatever the truth of the program was, it ended today.

Still, Peter had expected more. Gilding on the doors. Engraving, mosaics. Something deserving of a throne room of self-proclaimed gods who dwelled at the heart of a city in the sky. The schematics for this room literally named it ‘The Temple’ but, this was boring. It was just a plain heavy door with a regular digital lock. Where was their sense of grandeur? Peter and Mag had been so careful, taking out guards with out killing a one, so they wouldn’t be Seen before they had even begun. The least this awful government could do was make their prize look worth the effort.

Beyond the door was a squat little room with a single computer console. It looked like just another security station, two chairs and rows of blinking buttons and lights, streams of data projected on the wall before it. There was another door set in the wall to the side. No keypad or card reader, just a little silver handle. Peter looked to Mag, but his mentor just held a finger up to his lips and crept towards the desk, closing the doors behind them.

The data on the wall was…a confusing mess, honestly. But they did recognize some of it. Vital signs – blood pressure and heart rate and glucose and oxygen and artificial muscle-growth levels and a dozen types of brainwave activity. The kind of stuff doctors checked in coma patients.

Names floated above the profiles— Hannah Wire, Dashiell Rose, and Dahlia Rose.

Peter padded silently over to the console, and noticed for the first time that the display screen wall was actually a window. It looked down on a second room, a big metal cylinder, stretching so high that the ceiling was lost in shadow. Watery blue light shimmered off every surface. In the center of the room sat a huge, luminescent pool. And within the pool, floating softly, were three bodies.

Seeing them propped up in the liquid and arrayed like petals around the center of the pool, Peter finally understood the triskelion symbol plastered all over New Kinshasa’s constables. It felt like getting a bad joke everyone else had been in on but him. Even worse – he could even see a sort of halo, if he squinted at the tubes and glowing wires fed up from the liquid and plugged into the angels. Peter couldn’t make out much of the people, backlit and obscured as they were. But they looked like living machines woven into the heart of the city, fibre optic veins exposed to stale air.

Peter stopped himself from shivering, barely. It certainly wasn’t the ethereal Court of Dreamers shown in comics. The Angels were meant to be dynamic, regal, imperious. Paragons of justice and authority. Lager than life - beyond it, really. Receiving visions from the universe and tasking constables with the upkeep of _their_ world.

Yet the chamber was unnervingly still.

There was another figure in the room below, sitting beside the pool at a console identical to this one. Their lab coat was draped on the back of their chair, feet up on the desk as they nodded along to their own humming.

And flipped through a magazine.

_Did no one take this seriously?_

Mag traced along their console with a finger. He pried up a panel and disabled the alarm at the other console. A few more cut wires blocked the feed between the Temple and the actual police headquarters several storeys above. No signals would get through until Mag turned them back on. For the first time in decades, the city was blind. Mag didn’t see Peter worry at his lip.

 _(Do we sneak in and surprise him?)_ Peter signed to Mag.

 _(No point.)_ Mag grinned wide like a carnival barker. _(Let’s go meet Brahma’s saviours.)_

“Well sonny,” Mag said loudly, opening the interior door and leading Peter through it, down a ramp into the chamber, “we don’t normally let new hires into the inner sanctum, but as long as we keep this between you, me and the wallpaper…”

The technician started, hard, nearly falling out of their chair. “What are you doing in here?” Their voice cracked, gaze snapping between the pair and the door behind them.

Mag’s face was perfectly sheepish, but he kept walking forward. Peter kept pace behind him. “Giving the new kid a tour? He’s idolized the Angels for years and well—"

“No, no, no, no one is allowed in here. You’re supposed to stay outside—y-you can’t—” they froze and stared at the unresponsive security button under their finger.

“Technical problems, my good man?” Peter and Mag loomed over them now, crowding the technician into their chair. Mag’s smile was ghoulish in the watery light. A flick of his fingers, and he had an old-fashioned shiv in the air between them, wicked edge gleaming. He passed Peter zip ties and gestured for the technician to move back from the console. “There’s no reason this cant be perfectly civil, and then we’ll be out of your hair in no time.”

The technician shook as Peter secured him, but made no move to resist. “W-what do you want?”

“I told you! We’re here to meet our guardian angels.” Mag peered at the nametag hanging off the lab coat, “Wally, is it? Nice to meet you. If you could just move out of the way…” Peter dragged Wally, chair and all, where they could keep an eye on both them and the antechamber above. “Excellent! Now, for—”

He trailed off as quiet voices echoed through the chamber.

It was coming from the pool.

“What is that?” Peter strained to look at the three pre-cognitives, twitching and whimpering softly in the water. “What’s wrong with them?”

“They’re…” Wally swallowed, “They’re starting to see a murder. In a few minutes it’ll…”

“How can you tell?” Peter asked.

“What?”

He stepped away from Mag and the technician and towards the pool. “How do you know it’s a murder they’re seeing?”

“That’s”—they cleared their throat—"that’s what they do. They _only_ see murders. And if it’s a—a heat of the moment, kind of thing, they only see it _minutes_ before…” they trailed off, staring at the shiv again.

Mag’s grin was far too friendly. “Well if you are extra co-operative, they won’t have to see anything at all.” Mag switched off the screen warning of an incoming vision. “We don’t need that distracting us, am I right? No need to be frightened, my good man.” He pushed Wally’s chair a touch farther away, then moved in step with his boy to get a proper look at the Angels. Their gods laid prone before them.

Their glass-eyed stares disappeared into the void above Peter’s head.

They looked nothing like the action figures and posters sold on the surface. Hell, they looked – the twins could barely be older than Peter, and Hannah younger still. People should be calling her Annie and giving her juice boxes and dull training knives, or…whatever children with parents did.

Not this. Never _this_.

“Look at them,” Mag scoffed. “Untold lives just like your father’s, _taken_ by the whims of these false gods. We overthrow the heavens today Pete.” His large hand clapped onto Peter’s shoulder and squeezed.

Peter’s mouth was dry. “How old are they?”

The technician swallowed. “Uh, f-fourteen and eighteen.”

Mag shook his head and walked back to their captive. “How long have they been in there?”

“F-five years, last June.”

“But,” Peter looked back at them, frowning, “the Guardian Angel Program has been running for decades, at least.”

Wally gave a rictus smile. “Well at first it was all surveillance and predictive algorithms, messy stuff. Nothing—nothing reliable. U-until we got those three.”

“This is all fascinating,” Mag drawled, checking his watch “but I asked how long they have been in there this time.”

“I told you, five – “

“How long _today_ have they been in there for?”

“You don’t understand,” Wally snapped, then shrunk back into the chair. “T-they don’t come out of there. Ever. Not anymore.”

Peter felt nauseous. “You keep them trapped in there?” he managed.

“Every time we took them out, we missed murders. It’s… for the greater good.” Wally’s pallor took a greenish tint. “Those three for… everyone else.”

Peter looked to Mag, but his mentor was deep in thought, rubbing at that scar above his beard. Recalculating. So Peter moved to the edge of the pool and crouched, looking at one of the twins. “Which one is this?”

“That—that’s Dahlia. Please don’t disturb—"

“He’ll be careful, don’t you worry about him,” Mag cheerily snapped. He crowded the technician’s view to interrogate them with all the new questions that needed answering.

Mag would get everything they need, so Peter took a moment to study the Angels. The pre-cogs, who were twitching and whimpering softly. That vision was crawling restless through their minds.

“Are they, normally this…active? When they’re under?”

Peter turned and saw the technician gulp. “Only when there’s a…vision, coming.

“Calm down pal. I told you, we aren’t there yet.”

Wet fingers brushed against Peter’s hand. Dahlia was looking at him through heavy lidded eyes, head lolling. His mouth opened and closed like he was trying to say something. Peter took the larger, softer hand in his and gently squeezed.

“Don’t worry,” Peter whispered. “It’ll be over soon.”

“Stop!” the technician cried, “You can’t touch them! This is a clean room; we can’t risk contamination—”

“And I told you, pal, you have bigger things to worry about—"

All three pre-cogs were moaning now, quietly sobbing whispered breaths. And then all at once they were gasping, heads thrown back, spines arching out of the water. Peter scrambled away from the pool. An apology formed behind his lips, _he hadn’t meant to hurt them_. He was drowned out. A chorus of “ _Mag_ ”, sobbed and breathless, echoing through the chamber until it sounded like a whole host of angels, not just the three at Peter’s feet.

The technician was green. They thrashed at their bonds and blubbered.

Mag rolled his eyes so hard Peter could already hear him complain about a sore neck tomorrow. “Oh, for the love of – Peter would you take this knife from me? Thank you, son. There, see? I’m unarmed.” (Technically not true – he had a couple more in his pockets, as did Peter.) “We’ve just changed the future Wally, you and me. Now, come on Peter, let’s not stop there.”

Mag ruffled Peter’s hair, much to the boy’s annoyance, and lead him to the technician’s console. Wally recited a password for them, with a little prompting, and both sets of screens lit up. Mag’s screen had technical readouts. Peter’s was files, recordings, sorted by date and name and pre-cog.

“And this is every recorded vision?”

“Y-yes…”

And the thieves knew, that there would be more people arrested for crimes than would be on this list. The elder thief chuckled triumphantly. “Download that data, Petey. That’s just the evidence we’ve been looking for.”

Peter popped in the drive and their program started on its own. He drummed his fingers on the console, waiting. Five years of arrest records and visions in a police state would take a while to download. Meanwhile, music echoed into the chamber from above. It was the guitar he had heard, from the square. How often had the three angels heard that same music? Peter glanced at the three kids in the pool, then back at the technician.

“The files from the years before the pre-cogs…”

“On an archived server. Not on a network.”

“Ah.”

“What’s that, Pete?”

“Just…” Peter swallowed and picked at his nails. “If we find the data from the old guardian angel system…” _If they found the data of his father’s arrest…_

“We don’t have time for anything else here. I’m sorry, Peter.”

He nodded. “…It’s fine. We have work to do. Important work.” Peter wiped at dirt on the console.

Mag paused his typing and smiled at him. “It’ll all be worth it, my boy. I promise.”

Peter felt a little better, he did. He looked up into that gaping shadow where the ceiling wasn’t, trying to picture where they were under the city. His father’s city – he was more certain of it now than he ever had been, could feel that music echoing in his heart and in his old memories, nearly forgotten and buried but not gone. Not completely. And he pulled out the memory of his father, well worn like a photograph folded again and again. Of a tall man, warm and shadowed, but there. And his. That memory and the sound of the music fit together in a way that just felt so right. He wanted to share it with Mag, maybe that would be okay now that they were so close but… no. Not here, in this tomb. The jail cell of the pre-cogs was not the place for happy memories. It was a place for revolution.

And then he saw the other screen. “Wait, what are you doing? Mag we should be waking them up. That much sedative could—"

“I am putting an end to the Angels’ reign of terror, Pete. What we came here to do.”

“Reign of – _terror_? They are being used. We have to help them.”

Mag gave him a confused look. “They are enabling a regime.”

“They aren’t even awake!” He threw himself at Mag’s console, forcing Mag away, putting himself between the panel and his mentor.

“Peter,” Mag said with a stern sigh, “as long as those three are out there in the universe, they can be used like this again. Their very existence is dangerous. They’ll be hunted their entire lives by every despot and dictator, desperate to put them right back in whatever this machine is. This is the only way to make certain they are never used again.” His eyes were sad but firm. Unwavering.

And it made Peter scared.

“They’re just kids, Mag! They’re the same age as me!”

“We can’t risk anyone getting their hands on the pre-cogs again, and we can’t risk them hooking anything else up to this—"

“ _People_ , Mag! They are living, breathing— “

“—any _one_ else up to this system.” Mag sagged, not in defeat, not pleadingly. Just tired, and sad that it came to this fight. “Look, I can make it painless for the pre-cogs. They won’t even know it when the system fries. But this _has to be done_.”

“B-but, this room is connected directly to New Kinshasa’s main reactor,” Wally screeched from his chair. Peter honestly had forgotten about him. “If you overload the Temple it will disable the entire city – it’ll _fall_!”

_“Mag!”_

“Well that’s two birds with one stone then. I’m saving us a trip later.”

Peter felt cold. “Wha—when did we go from kidnappers to mass murderers?”

Mag ran a hand through his hair. “This was always our plan; get rid of the angels and then when the city was blind, come back to take down New Kinshasa.”

_“I didn’t think you meant literally!”_

_“Peter—"_

“My father gave his _life_ to keep people _free_. I don’t think he’d want you to _destroy_ his _home_ just to take out three innocent people! How can you expect me to do this?

“Because it’s what we’ve always been working for! Honestly, Pete, what has gotten into you?—

“These kids are as much victims as we are, Mag! Trapped below this city, just like we were. This was meant to be – how often did my father take me to that square right above us? Right above the Angels I was meant to save? You can’t just take away my link to him. There has to be another way!” Peters voice cracked. Normally he’d be mortified, but he stomped down his pride. Standing firm on this was more important.

Mag _scoffed_. “Stop this nonsense Peter. You have never been to that square before today.”

“Why not? I lived here with my father, you said so, and if he—"

“Oh for gods sakes there’s no time for this. You couldn’t possibly remember New Kinshasa because you’ve never been here before.”

“I—what?” Broken glass filled Peter’s chest, tore with every breath. “—but—you said—my father—"

“I said your father was a great man. And I meant it.” Mag’s eyes burned, his mouth a grim line. “To make you he would have to be”

“…You never really met him, did you. You just. Made it all up. You lied to me for years.” Peter felt light, dizzy. His death grip on the console was the only reason he was still standing. Mag was speaking but he barely heard it. “But why would you lie? People already think its terrible – they know it has to be stopped!”

“I lied because of how you’re acting in this moment Pete. Because in the face of uncertainty, three _strangers’_ faces I’ll remind you, revolution crumbles. History is complicated. Facts take years, decades to prove absolutely and in the meantime—People. Are. Killed. Did I ever know your father? No. Am I certain there was a man like him somewhere on Brahma? Completely. And I know there will be more like him if we don’t stop this city. Now.

“Killing the angels wouldn’t be enough.” Mag loomed over him, throwing the weight of his words into the look he pinned Peter with. “This city will just keep lying about the pre-crime reports. The constables will still be armed. This is the only way.”

“But we were _wrong_ , Mag! The angels aren’t malevolent gods, they’re just kids! And if we were wrong about that—"

“There is no other way!”

“How am I supposed to believe that?” _Peter would not cry, he wouldn’t._ He clutched at his anger like a lifeline in a storm. “If you’ll lie, if you’ll say anything to prove your truth, how do I know this isn’t a lie too?”

“Peter—"

“We _can’t_ do this,” Peter said, shaping every word more carefully than he’d done in his life. “You can’t just kill thousands because you are afraid of three people. We can take the angels and the evidence a-and…”

“And what, Peter? Leave the people below at the mercy of this city while we play babysitter for the rest of our lives?”

“We’ll find another way.”

“Peter, move. Now.”

The young thief stood steady on fraying nerves. He squared his shoulders, fingers digging into the console behind him.

Mag sighed theatrically. “Fine. That’s not the only access panel in here.”

“No!” Peter raised the shiv he still clutched, taking a half step forward. “Stop! I’ll do it – I swear I will!”

“You’d raise a knife on me? The man who took you in from the street – who raised you!”

“I can’t let you do this!”

“I have to. Because I stand for something. Once, I thought you did too.”

And Mag turned away, to the walkway and the observation chamber above with a second control panel. He’d be there in seconds – people would die in minutes. And he wasn’t listening to Peter anymore.

_“Don’t walk away from me!”_

Peter dove, grabbed Mag’s arm. But the other man—older, stronger—shook him off. And he kept walking. And fear curled in Peter’s gut, heavy and nauseating and the shiv was still in his hand and—

And…

_Oh god, Mag._

Screams. Cries of pain. Sobbing voices, more than his own. A big rough hand reaching for the knife in his back, then brushing at Peter’s face. Eyes so full of love, still, _after what he’d just done—Mag, oh Mag—_

He realized he was on the floor, clutching the lapels of the body… of the man who…

He got himself under control, but the voices kept crying, kept echoing. They were coming from the pool, and slowly dying into whimpers. He looked over at them. Eyes, steely, groggy but awake, were watching him over the lip of the pre-cog’s pool. Dahlia.

Peter shied away from that gaze. He forced himself up to the control panel and flicked on the screen, hands shaking. The drive had downloaded every logged and recorded vision. Including the latest. And unfourtunately it was auto playing the images from that one. Of Peter, holding the knife… and, Mag…

No time for that now.

It took some digging, but he found the sequence to disconnect the angels. Machinery whirred as the tubes switched from pumping sedatives to some kind of steroid. He prayed to anyone listening that it acted fast.

Peter counted his steps around the room and stopped. Nine feet from the base of the stairs. He pried a panel off the wall and there was the old service elevator. Right where M… right where _the blueprints_ said it’d be.

He hopped into the pool and started pulling the first puppet from her strings, furiously ignoring the blood running off him into the water around him. Hannah whimpered quietly as he lifted her, fingers clutching weakly at his arm. He laid her down in the elevator, apologizing as her eyes drifted shut again, and jumped back into the water.

Dashiell was the next closest, but he was so, so much heavier. Getting him towards freedom took much longer. Getting him over the edge of the pool took awkward manoeuvring, and precious seconds he didn’t have.

And because the universe hated him, that’s when a pounding started through the walls. Peter’s heart jumped into his throat. Constables, at the external doors. No no no…

The red glow of the laser drill was already visible through the metal.

He dragged Dashiell into the elevator as the doors started to melt.

He’d never get Dahlia over in time.

“I-if you give up now,” Wally pleaded, “I’ll tell them you saved the angels, that you saved everyone!”

Peter risked a glance at them and just felt sick. He punched the elevator button and slipped out as the door snapped shut. A different shiv in a hidden pocket was enough to break the call button. The panel popped back into place over all of it. Just as the constables broke through.

He ignored their shouting, jumping a final time into the pool, gathering Dahlia’s heavy form into his arms. Dahlia was far more awake than the others had been, mumbling sleepily against Peter’s shoulder.

A constable shouted for him to stop. On instinct they raised their weapon, but didn’t fire. Couldn’t fire, while an angel was between. Peter clutched Dahlia tighter.

“Hold your breath,” he whispered, and pulled the emergency lever on the edge of the pool.

Water folded around them, swept them under and down the drain. Beyond the constables’ reach.

* * *

_Always have multiple exit strategies Pete, first rule of thieving._

Peter collapsed on the metal walkway inches above the pools surface, lungs burning and muscles screaming. Beside him Dahlia shivered, eyes unfocussed.

The long forgotten service elevator into the Temple had felt like a miracle when they finally noticed it on the blueprints. Much better than the emergency flush of the… whatever liquid the angels floated in, down to the special reservoir to be recycled. Peter hadn’t expected to have to use _both,_ but that’s what redundancies were for. The unexpected.

At least the blood was finally gone.

Dahlia started moving, reaching for the rail, and trying to pull himself up. And failing.

Peter caught him but sank to the ground under his weight. Cold arms wrapped around his shoulders and held him. But he could tell from the way the rest of Dahlia was going slack, that the angel was passing out on him. Panic fluttered in Peter’s chest.

“No we – we have to keep moving,” he pleaded. He had to keep moving, or else he’d stop to think about… about…

A sob hitched out of Peter’s chest. The arms around him held tighter. He clutched back, desperately, focussing on the feel of Dahlia’s wetsuit, the weight of him, the warmth of him, to tether him in the storm of emotion threatening to overtake him.

“Please wake up,” he breathed, “please. I can’t…”

Thankfully, blessedly, Dahlia stirred. He tried to squirm out of Peter’s grip, quietly mumbling something over and over. ‘Dash’, it sounded like. His brother.

“I’ll get you to him, I promise,” Peter whispered, using the rail to drag them both up.

He slung Dahlia’s arm over his shoulder and wrapped his around the pre-cog’s broad chest. Everything about this was awkward; Peter was taller but Dahlia was heavier, and still mostly out of it. But with Peter’s help he managed to get his bare feet under himself. And they limped their way slowly to the door.

The sterile white walls of the service level were a maze, but fortunately a maze Peter had memorized. Just a few quick turns from the Temple recycling plant to a smaller service bay, where the service elevator came out and, hopefully, had a big enough hover trolley to get three barely conscious teens to a car.

“Stop,” Dahlia choked out. He pulled at Peter’s collar.

“I’m sorry,” Peter whispered loudly as he dared, “but we can’t. Not here, there’s no time to—”

Dahlia pitched his weight, suddenly, pulling Peter back from the intersection they were about to step into. It was only from years of practice, and quite a bit of luck, that he managed to keep them both standing. Except Dahlia kept at it, forcing them both back into an alcove made by a doorway, mostly out of the way of the intersection.

“What are you—” he hissed, but Dahlia pressed a hand to Peter’s mouth weakly. He supposed it was meant to be a shushing motion. Peter obliged, listening.

It took a while, but a troop of guards came walking down the hallway they had been heading for.

If they had kept walking they would have been in plain view of those guards.

Peter looked down at Dahlia. Those steely eyes were clearer than they had been, looking back at him steadily even as Dahlia trembled against him.

It wasn’t until the guards faded from hearing again that he dared to even breathe. “Is it…safe?”

Dahlia nodded and let his head drop back to Peter’s shoulder. Peter readjusted his grip, held Dahlia tighter. He steadied himself using the rhythm of Dahlia’s slower breathing, and set off again.

The elevator came to a nearly abandoned hall, disused since some renovation. Meaning Peter could prop Dahlia against the wall and pry up the dry wall plastered over it in relative peace. He opened the doors and was nearly bowled over by Dahlia throwing himself past. He hit the floor rather sharply, but barely seemed to notice as he crawled over to Dashiell. Annie too, he pulled them both to himself and curled up around them.

“No, come on we still have to get out of here.”

Dahlia looked back and up at him but made no move to, well, move. Peter frowned.

“Do you understand me?”

Still no real response. Dahlia looked away from him a little uncomfortably, hunched around his family a little more protectively, but that was all. Peter swore.

He tried to sign instead, but Dahlia just shook his head. Ok not Deaf, more likely he didn’t speak Brahmese at all. Peter didn’t have time to run through all the languages he knew. He floundered for a second, before it occurred to him to press his fingers to his own mouth as Dahlia had before, and say “Stop.”

That got a look of recognition. Dahlia nodded. Peter smiled weakly, in spite of the dire situation.

Peter could step back into his thief training properly when he was alone. Sneaking around and finding a supply room with a hover cart without being spotted, in record time. And he offered up a prayer to the house god he had never known that the pre-cogs were still there waiting for him.

The other two were rousing a little, enough to have a stuttering conversation with Dahlia. It sounded like they were speaking… Solar.

Peter felt a chill.

These three were quite a long way from home.

* * *

There had been a resistance ship they were supposed to meet with, him and mag and three kidnapped Angels. The resistance would smuggle them far away and then… well, Peter hadn’t been told the whole plan.

Now he wondered if everyone had been as radicalized as Mag, or if his former mentor was a special case.

It was a risk he couldn’t take right now. But coming up with a new plan on the spot in a high security fortress on lockdown would tax even the greatest thief.

Fourtunately he had the Angels.

Dashiell and Dahlia steered him away from routes that would run into anyone. And Hannah pointed him to a small, stealthy ship just being unlocked and flight checked by a single pilot. Peter tased them and stashed them in a supply closet, stealing their dry uniform (he furiously did not think about how this person’s clothes did not fit him properly).

Peter reached for the flight controls, but his hand was shaking too badly to register with the holo-screen.

All three pre-cogs were huddled together, shivering under a shock blanket. Dahlia in the middle, his arms around the other two like he could shield them from whatever came for them next. His gaze burned into Peter’s, like staring at the sun on a cloudless day. He was terrified, sure, but that just made him fierce, defiant. He would do whatever it took to protect the other two, that much Peter was certain of.

Peter tempered his resolve on the fire of that glare, and started the ship.

* * *

+

When they were past New Kinshasa airspace, there was a loud gasp from behind. Dashiell was clinging to the co-pilot’s seat, staring out over the skies of Brahma. “Ca—” he rasped, “can… you… see?” His eyes were wide. He switched to speaking Solar, gushing «God Mars was such an ugly rock. Dahl, hey Dahl look at this! Look at all those fucking trees! »

«Nope! »

«We’ve been watching nothing but murders for years, and you’d rather look at your own eyelids than a _red sunrise?? What? Dude it’s red!_ »

«Yep I'm good. »

There was a yelp from Dahlia as Annie scrambled over him to look out the windshield, all trembling limbs and awe.

« _Wow_ …» she breathed, «No dome or anything. Just…»

« _Sky_. »

«I think I’m gonna be sick. »

**Author's Note:**

> I have four parts planned for this au and I swore i'd have more written before i posted any but this part stand alone and i am. impatience.
> 
> Also while writing this, months back I realized if annie was young enough her name could reasonably be short for andromeda, canonically. and i'm not entirely sure how northstar shook out in this au but when the kids pick their Real names later she's going with andromeda bc thats canon to me bay-by


End file.
